> Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen.
When I started reading the article, I thought the whole point was gonna be that the author doesn't take care of the apartment.
The recurring leak might not be the author's fault, but the mold in the bathroom and roaches in the kitchen definitely are. Is this a case of a total lack of self-reflection? Or a post to scare people away from becoming landlords?
Fwiw, most mould is caused by buildings. Poor ventilation, leaks, no waterproofing, substandard building materials.
Yes, you can avoid mould in older buildings by carefully airing out rooms and keeping things dry and away from walls. But not if the previous three tenants had a mould issue and the landlord just painted over it.
An honourable mention to fitting Cavity Wall Insulation, heavily sold and encouraged by UK government energy saving schemes thorough the 1990's and 2000's.
Except by stuffing the wall cavity, you provide a nice moisture bridge to outside whilst simultaneously stopping air circulating in the cavity and whipping away moisture; thus an explosion of mould.
The policy was a disaster, as getting the stuff removed costs a small fortune.
I think this depends on the construction of the rest of the house. A typical stack built house in the US will have extensive insulation in the exterior walls, but it's paired with a number of different layers intended to expel moisture.
As a retrofit without those things I guess I can see it being problematic.
Maybe everyone here can help me. I bought a house with an accessory addon already built, but it's walls and roof are very cheap aluminum. It's a constant source of mold. I'm at the point where I want to demolish it and rebuild properly. Some contractors I've spoken with instead encourage me to just frame out inside the existing aluminum box and get double pane windows instead. I don't think that will solve the problem though, these cheap aluminum panels are so full of mold now how would putting fresh wood over the panels solve anything, in 4 years I'll just have more mold growing over the interior frame out if I don't demolish and rebuild the whole thing with proper moisture barriers on the exterior and underside of the accessory room.
Trailer park in California. It's a prefab kit built accessory room. The main part of the trailer is normal, just this accessory room is built out of aluminum panels (about 3' x 9' per panel) and then plenty of single pane windows.
Mold growth is a moisture problem which can either be because of condensation or because of leaks. I agree with the contractors, properly framing out and insulating the interior would probably help a lot with condensation on the inside of the aluminum, as would double pane windows. Ventilation is also important for stopping mold growth.
Who has cavity wall insulation removed? The effect on your heating bill is going to be much worse than a small amount of mould, and I'm unconvinced that it makes it worse anyway - one of the main causes of mould in my experience is poor insulation! It makes the walls cold, which means you get condensation on them, and if you have poor ventilation in the rooms then you get mould.
If you have this problem, then the only thing I found which helps is fungicidal wash, and keeping furniture away from the problem walls (especially north facing corners of the house). I suspect wallpaper would also help but I never tried it.
Who has cavity wall insulation removed? The effect on your heating bill is going to be much worse than a small amount of mould
Some of these houses have been transformed into being unfit for human habitation due to the damp and mould. In some cases, the botched insulation has resulted in an increase in heating costs (along with the damp and mold). Some have suffered structural damage due to the botched insulation, costing tens of thousands to repair.
It's definitely true that not all apartments are equally prone to mold, but individual behavior also has a huge effect on mold. If you know that you're living in a place that's susceptible to mold, you have to take that into account when deciding how to furnish your place and how to manage humidity.
Yes, but no. We have historic, sometimes even mediaeval buildings. They weren't built with the current energy efficiency in mind.
Leaving the bathroom door open after showering. Not putting furniture flus against the wall are simple measures you could take that don't need structural adaptations.
I know there are plentiful of technical options but some common sense goes a long way.
It infuriates me to no end that we are expected to put up with building design and technology from 1900 as a consequence of the obsession with "property values must go up" (notwithstanding the property) and a healthy helping of "regulations are only ever added to, everything old is forever grandfathered".
Like, central ventilation is not magical unobtainable technology. Simple heat recovery even vastly improves heating costs in a way insulation never can.
What’s the alternative? Governments pass regulations and all buildings must be adapted within 12 months? 36 months?
What of the buildings that don’t
comply in time? Or can’t find trades to do it in time? Or we notice to our eternal shock that projects to ensure code tracking are priced at a serious premium?
Or, how many improvements to code would we decide weren’t desirable because of the costs of retrofitting, so now we lose even the low slope of improvement versus today.
This is a fairly well-trod path in economic policy circles, especially in Europe. You can either grandfather in buildings, perhaps with rules that line up with maintenance schedules anyway so that when something breaks anyway you replace it with the new standard (the HVAC world understands this well with refrigerants), or you sign yourself up for stunning, astronomical expense.
Not to mention, a lot of places around the world care about the look and character of historical locations. If a structure wasn't designed for central HVAC, for example, then there's often nowhere to hide the condenser units, air handle units or the ductwork. Same with insulation -- if that exterior wall wasn't intended to have it you've got a couple options and they both hurt.
Last of all, I'll mention labor. The type of skilled labor that can do any specific trade at all is relatively rare in the aftermath of the "college-or-bust" era, but the kind of labor you'd want for renovation work (fast, efficient, can tackle multiple different aspects at once without calling in different trades, and gets it right the first time to minimize disruption/call backs) is even more rare. To carry out some kind of massive renovation project at a national level even with infinite money you're talking about a generational timeframe just due to labor constraints.
Yeah. The last two apartments I've been in have had leaks. I begged the landlord to open up the walls and dry them out. They just painted over it, so I moved out. Sadly, that means two other people now in apartments can never figure out why their place smells musty and they feel a bit congested all the time.
Yeah I thought this was gonna be about landlords hiking the price beyond market value after 2 years. But honestly both those issues are just the apartment is deep cleaned before you move in and this person doesn't know how to or just doesn't clean their bathroom properly, not cleaning bathroom fan filter and leaves food waste out in the kitchen.
Probably would have a better experience if they hired a cleaner.
> The recurring leak might not be the author's fault, but the... roaches in the kitchen definitely are
"Definitely"? A unit can look clean after treatment while still being mid-cycle. Rent it during that window and the roaches come back through no fault of the tenant.
It wouldn't even be that crazy to postulate the life-cycle of a roach could track the 2-Year Apartment Rule (minus any residual effects of the extermination).
I don’t know how you get a moral judgement out of this article. That's misdirected blame. It pressures tenants into staying quiet or spraying their own units for a building-level problem.
> Development to adult averages about 15 months, varying between 9-1/2 to 20 months.
> Buildings with multiple dwellings usually require the treatment of each unit.
This pretty much contradicts blaming the tenant and the roach development aligns with the 2-Year Apartment Rule. It says apartments usually require each unit to be treated. That means no single tenant can do that. That makes it a building-level infestation by definition.
> "Definitely"? A unit can look clean after treatment while still being mid-cycle. Rent it during that window and the roaches come back through no fault of the tenant.
"A unit" can, sure. But, "every apartment I've ever lived in"... come on! From TFA:
> I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in. Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen.
If this doesn't set off all the alarm bells, I don't know what does.
More than what? If my neighbour has 2000 roaches in his apartment. Then it would not be strange 10 walks into mine. And if they do they of course gonna hang out were they find the most amount of food (even if you clean odds are there is going to be more residue etc in kitchen vs bedroom)
I had neighbors with filthy apartments who thought the solution is routine spraying. Every time, the roaches would take shelter in mine through unknown passages.
Most leases have clauses stating something to the effect that tenants are responsible for keeping their units reasonably clean and sanitary. If tenants start complaining about roaches, a good landlord will do a bit of investigation and remind tenants of the importance of cleanliness, proper disposal of trash, etc.
At least in Oakland, it's the landlord's responsibility to manage pest control. It needs to be done at a building level, or else the roaches will just get shuffled around.
Yeah a good landlord will do pest control but cockroaches are...cockroaches. If you do pest control but have tenants who are leaving food waste out, not disposing of trash properly, etc. it will be a game of whack-a-mole.
As far as communities are concerned, the best places to live are the places where landlords/management and residents/tenants both do their parts to keep things clean and habitable. Teamwork makes the dream work.
> ...a "good" landlord will lecture the tenant without solving the problem
Huh? When it comes to pests, it takes effort on both sides, especially in environments that are prone to pests. A landlord can pay for regular pest control services but if there are tenants who don't store and dispose of waste properly, it can reduce their efficacy.
Yeah, I think that is the case: the 2 years may be a reflection on the level of care they give.
We built a house and after 2 years it started to need more maintenance, it is normal. I fixed it and every now and then I need to do more. Just regular adult life.
It could be the author's fault, but IMO more likely the apartment's, the landlord's, and/or the neighborhood's fault.
With mold, I guess the people living there have some influence, they might never open the window, they might shower 50 minutes, etc... but there are some places where no matter how careful you are, mold will show up. And even if a perfect tenant with the perfect process for preventing mold might be able to keep it away, you can't be expected to meet those standards. Some buildings are just more prone to mold than others.
Same with cockroaches... Sure maybe OP never cleans up in the kitchen and leaves chinese take out in the sink for a month. It can also be that their neighbor is extremely messy, or one window is next to the trash, or that the pipes have something nasty in them that never got cleaned out, so no matter how clean your room is, the roaches still get in somehow.
Roaches in a clean, maintained apartment means there is a problem elsewhere in the building. We had a small infestation. And no matter how many times we called the exterminator they kept coming back. Found out one of our neighbors was a hoarder. He passed away, they deep cleaned the apartment, and the roach problem stopped right away. Roaches still need to feed and breed. Once you take that away no more roaches.
The point is in a high density urban environment it's the neighborhood not just your specific building and in some places it's not realistic to imagine the entire neighborhood to be thoroughly clean.
New York City is certainly a good case in point with the city's massive amount of garbage placed on the sidewalk once a week
My first thought. I also encountered this problem and learned to clean the kitchen every night, never leave anything edible on countertop and floot, and store everything in good food containers.
Same here. Especially that 2 year window... That was about when mold took over my bathroom. Then I wiped it all with Chlorine based cleaner, installed a duct with fan which works for up to 2 hours after detecting motion, made a grill in the door and there has been little to no mold since (in year 4 now).
But there may also be an element of insufficient building codes? Mold comes with poor (and inhomogeneous) heating, insufficient ventilation, bad moisture shielding (hot moist air should never enter and cool down in a building's structure), cold-bridges (not sure what the English term is for parts of a house significantly colder that other so moisture settles there). Ventilation holes should be well defined, and not via cracks that also let creatures in... Etc.
So it may not be all OP's fault. But it sure sounds like it.
I've unfortunately lived in too many houses where mold becomes a problem. It's never my fault, it's always been because the house is old/doesn't have proper damp proofing/cheap paint was used, or no damp proofing applied on exterior walls. I clean it, of course, so I'm not literally living in a house with moldy walls, and I keep the house as dry and ventilated as possible. But in certain climates it's nearly inevitable to get mold during winter or the humid season unless the house is very well built and modern.
The worst, and again very common, is when the paint is so cheap it can't be cleaned easily - when you use anything that can actually clean the mold (soapy water + a bit of vinegar is my preference, but baking soda, very weak bleach solution, or commercial mold cleaners) it also destroys the paint.
Do you have HVAC? Maybe some of my difficultly understanding is being American I'm in a hotter, much more humid climate, so we've got central HVAC. A key feature of heat pumps isn't just that it lowers the temperature of the air, it also reduces humidity.
I've got a lot of exposure to new home construction here and can tell you I don't even know what "damp proofing" is, and our bathrooms don't need special paint. They're ventilated and we have HVAC. Beyond that, if homeowners take 30 minute showers with scalding hot water and the door closed then, well, the outcome is inevitable no matter what you do. Not just mold but you'll start damaging fixtures, etc.
It's hard to get old caulking clean and keep it mold free, just gotta recaulk regularly, but I'm somewhat skeptical of blaming paint.
> Maybe some of my difficultly understanding is being American
In the UK, in winter, ambient exterior air is both fairly cold (let's say 40F) and extremely humid, often around 80% relative humidity.
Houses are both poorly insulated and poorly ventilated. Heating is (relatively) very expensive.
Most housing units don't have clothes dryers, and it's common to dry clothing indoors on wire racks.
The net result is that you end up with extremely humid indoor air in the 55F-65F range, while the exterior walls and windows of the building never really heat up properly.
It's a recipe for condensation on the interior surfaces of those walls and windows.
You can fix this either by heating the building enough that the exterior walls actually heat up beyond the dew point (which few people can afford to do), or by keeping windows open in winter to provide some ventilation (which makes the already-poorly-heated building even less comfortable).
No, I've never seen a residential house with HVAC, even in big apartments. It's all split wall mounted AC units here, or if you're fancy a ceiling version that's basically the same. I think Americans call these heat pumps?
Split AC systems remove moisture from the air when they’re running too, that’s why there’s a condensate drain on the evaporator (and the condenser, but that is outside).
There is specific kitchen / bathroom paint that is smoother and has some anti-mold ingredients. Makes a huge difference to use the correct paint in a damp environment.
Condensation itself is a function of the air conditions (temperature and relative humidity ie dew point) and surface temperatures. All surfaces should be comfortably above the dew point to prevent mold. You can use a hygrometer to measure the air, and an infrared thermometer to measure surface temperatures.
Absolutely but one thing about living in rented accommodation - you rarely get to choose the paint.
I agree that a dehumidifier helps but you basically need one in every room. Where I live you can easily take out 10 liters a day from every room during the humid season (which is the maximum capacity of the machine I rented).
Might be different but repainting your apartment is expected from renters here to the point that contracts often state you need to do it every X years and before moving out.
> All surfaces should be comfortably above the dew point to prevent mold.
I agree that this should be the case, but actually achieving this in the UK (where heating is very expensive and housing is poorly insulated) is prohibitively expensive for many people.
There's a relatively easy technological solution to mold: buy a dehumidifier.
We bought two after moving to Ireland. Both have drainage hoses. One has a pump and empties into the kitchen sink, the other has no pump and the drainage hose empties into the shower. No more mold problems.
Thank you for sharing. Do your dehumidifiers run all the time? Do they have some kind of auto on / auto off feature? Do you run them on some schedule? As necessary? I am thinking it would be very easy for me to forget unless it is a set it and forget it kind of thing.
I used to be in a house that needed a dehumidifier. I bought one with a built-in pump to empty the water tank, which can be tapped into an AC drain line, sink drain, or directly outdoors, depending on your situation. You can set many of them to run constantly or when humidity is above a certain level.
If you live in a hot/humid location your HVAC is much better at dehumidification than a dehumidifier, since a dehumidifier outputs a ton of heat to operate. But in a cool/humid location, you can definitely rig up one to be decently set and forget. You still need to perform maintenance (cleaning the grill, adding a bit of white vinegar to the water tank to kill growth buildup, etc).
I actually put mine into the HVAC cabinet and used a smart plug and smart thermostat to turn on the dehumidifier and the HVAC fan to dehumidify the house. But that’s way more than you need to do for a small apartment.
Ours has been on constantly for nearly a year. Any decent one has humidity set points - we set ours for 55%. It's a bang-bang controller with a 5% range - it'll run until humidity drops to 52%, then turn off until it rises to 57%. During the winter our single one struggles to get much below 60%, we might add a second next year.
An unexpected benefit (for us, as its not something we're used to) is its virtually "free", as we don't have to run the electric clothes dryer anymore (nearly €4/load). We just hang the clothes on a rack by the dehumidifier and it dries them out in a few hours. My wife is starting to prefer it as its not destroying clothes nearly as quickly.
> An unexpected benefit (for us, as its not something we're used to) is its virtually "free", as we don't have to run the electric clothes dryer anymore (nearly €4/load). We just hang the clothes on a rack by the dehumidifier and it dries them out fairly quickly.
It’s not free as the dehumidifier has to do more work. If you have a modern heat-pump clothes dryer you might be using more electricity by abusing your humidifier like this.
"Free" as in our electric bill was basically unchanged before and after it; and we still get 10-15% lower humidity on average which has taken care of our (minor) mold problems.
Roaches are notoriously hard to get rid for a reason. If you don't call an exterminator with the proper poison almost any effort you make will be moot.
I can tell you from firsthand experience that roaches will move with you. My partner's old apartment had roaches and even though we took great care to clean and separate everything, keep all of her kitchen stuff in tubs and slowly sort through it they still managed to come to the new apartment.
The author lacks self-reflection if they truely thing each brand new place suddenly gets roaches.
> If you don't call an exterminator with the proper poison almost any effort you make will be moot.
Nah, not true. I lived in a student housing that was positively _infested_ with cockroaches (and had stuff like wood paneling on the walls, just to get an idea - i.e. lots of places for roaches to hide). We managed to largely get rid of cockroaches in our room (you still get the occasional one, because well, you had to open the door, and hallways were infested as I mentioned).
It's not _that_ hard, there are a lot of solutions. You need to do 3 things:
a. seal all holes/cracks/niches (e.g. with silicone). cover ventilation holes with nets. Install sponge/rubber bands to make sure doors/windows close well.
b. kill them once when you move in (after doing the work at point a) using copious amounts of insecticides; then install roach traps (sticky ones are good) to catch the occasional one that makes it through your defenses. Keep occasional spraying in the corners/ behind the fridge/ near the pipes/ in places where they are likely to gather.
c. Keep it clean/ don't offer a lot of incentives for roaches to come over to you (no breadcrumbs all over the place, food in closed containers etc)
Do these well and you should be largely roach-free, regardless of the building. But yeah, it's an annoying fight if the building itself is infested.
I lived in an old but thoroughly maintained building, every 6 months and at the beginning of summer, there was a thorough extermination routine applied through out the whole building, you could see a ring of dead roaches around the building the next day, 2 to 4 weeks later you would start spotting them in the apartment again. They leave and die and new ones move in. In old buildings they are just a fact of life, keep your home clean and crumb free and they will prefer your neighbors.
My building is 15 stories, built in 1916. I’m on the 2nd floor. Every apartment can sign up for the monthly exterminator when he comes to do common areas. Are there roaches? You bet. Not a ton but you’ll see one or two a few times a month.
My parents used to be landlords. For years they always bought used appliances for the apartments to save money until a used stove came with a surprise roach infestation. New appliances only after that.
I think a lot of people are worried about informing the landlord (especially after two years) as market rates will have risen, and getting stuff fixed might prompt a rise on their own apartment.
This has been my experience as well. Many owners want to know about issues before they fester.
I'm fortunate to have an attentive property manager and a landlord who is interested in doing the preventative maintenance to keep the units from degrading.
I inherited a mold and moisture problem under the kitchen sink when I moved in, one that I neglected for a while. As soon as I told my landlord they sent a crew out to tear down the wall, fix the plumbing, and rebuild it in a more robust manner.
I don't even have a particularly nice apartment. My apartment just turned 100 years old, but it's maintained well enough. I've been here seven years now. I keep my house clean, don't leave food out, and still see the occasional cockroach in the kitchen. Probably once every 1-2 months. Fine.
The article seems mostly about noticing a fun coincidence backed by anecdotal evidence, except I’m currently going through the same thing, so I’m lending the theory more weight. (The elevators were always fine; now, two years later, they’re constantly out, and the garage door is busted for the first time.)
My thought was that it could plausibly be that renting goes in cycles: the building is desperate for renters, so they fix everything, advertise, and so on. Then, once they’re full, the company cuts costs by reducing maintenance. Then they lose renters, and the cycle continues.
However, I then thought about my last two buildings, which were cheaper, and things were just broken right from the start, so… who knows.
I can see the greater complex-wide cycle argument for complex wide amenities, leasing office support, and maintenance request response/resolution times.
Everyone moves out, so the above issues become a higher priority until units are backfilled. Since units are filled, the above issues become less important (to the owners at least, not the renters). Then renters receive this worse service, start moving out in waves, and the cycle continues.
The mold, and in-unit plumbing, and insect issues seem more like routine maintenance types of things to me. But compounded slightly by longer maintenance request response/resolution times.
Of course you should take care of your home, but to be fair, the moisture that caused the mold could have come from a leak elsewhere. The roaches could have found a way into your home from that crackhead neighbor's place through cracks and seams somewhere in the construction.
Author seems to imply that the issues are the landlord's fault though, since their theory is that it's on purpose to be able to raise rent on the next guy.
They also imply that is always happen.
> I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in.
Sure, you can have a mold issue in the bathroom because of poor ventilation. Happened to me in a flat.
But if it happens every time, the renter can probably be the culprit.
Same for the cockroaches.
You can be victim of a neighbor’s lack of care.
But if it happens in every flat, maybe you're the problem.
I'm all-in for blaming landlord's of taking money from renters and not putting any money back on helping keeping the flat in a livable state.
But some of the issue the author is pointing out, and the fact that they happen in every flat, make me think that maybe part of the blame is on them.
I had the same thought after reading the first few sentences. Bathrooms and kitchens especially have to be cleaned regularly, and not just superficially. Otherwise, what the author describes happens.
> but the mold in the bathroom and roaches in the kitchen definitely are.
I would not agree.
Having lived in low budget apartments for quite a while as a student, a lot of these things are "a norm" and not really the renters fault, but the owners.
Examples:
I moved into an apartment that was "subterranean" level, meaning not fully basement but also not ground floor. When we were looking at it, it seemed fine, everything great, but bathroom had the tiniest vent window ever. I asked about the mold, and the owner was like "oh no, no need to worry about that, the ventilation is quite good actually even tho the window is tiny, we made sure of that" - and at the moment, it seemed so, the air was dry and there was no "humid" feeling about the room.
Well, well - the bathroom was humid as hell and would stay that way after the first shower, even with all the vents open and ventilation turned on. Even worse, the humidity in the rooms was so high that the paint on the wall stayed fresh for quite a long time, painting a few of my shirts that touched the wall. When summer came, the rooms became a hotspot for mosquitoes, and the owner would be like "ah just close the windows" - but that kept the humidity and heat in, making life unbearable and causing mold to erupt (also, because a lot of it was just painted over!! just painted over mold, like what the fuck?)
Another one had homeless people which started living around the building, leaving food and booze all over the place. To make it worse, large trash bins were outside our building, which lead to roaches coming in from the bins and from the balconies, under which the aforementioned people "lived". We couldn't do nothing about it, except ensure that there is minimal reason for them to come to us, lay traps around and ensure we have anti-bug powders around the perimeter. I talked to some of the neighbors that lived there for years and they said it happens nearly every summer.
The bed in the apartment started falling apart at some point, and going to fix it I noticed the bed _was fixed_ already, even tho it was said to be new - and it was fixed badly. The same owner charged me 2k for a "designer couch" that "we ruined", even tho before us moving in the couch was welded and nailed together, as it was obviously broken before, and the owner did not want to admit it even when shown the photo evidence.
Once I moved out, I saw what happened to the apartment on the next listing - the owner just painted over the kitchen cabinets, painted the bed, put a new mattress on it and said "all furniture is new".
So a lot of things might sound like they're the authors fault, but having met one too many "bad actors" in the renting game, I'm quite sure that some of these things might be the owners responsibility.
> I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in. Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen. Once the lease is up for renewal, I'm dying to leave. I then move into a sparkly, new apartment where I repeat the process all over again.
Sounds like it takes her about 2 years to trash any apartment she moves into.
I think apartments needs maintenance and it's hard to communicate to the landlord there is a problem or fix or find someone to fix it. The mold is very common.
The mold is very easy to remove when it's small but it becomes exponentially bigger growing.
Go on Amazon search for anti-mold cleaning product and a spatula. When you see a mold 1cm large get on a chair spray and scrape. It will take 5 minute. If you wait 3 months thinking you should tell the landlord and then the landlord will call someone then the mold will have become 100 square cm, it will be a 100 minutes to clean.
The roaches too if they are in your kitchen call a exterminator. Don't leave food out at night, clean all crumbs.
If you don't take care of those things even in a a new building they will appear on their own after 2 years.
I'm going to get flamed for this, but I think this is one less-focused-on benefit of buying a single family home. You're responsible for the maintenance but if you want to or have to do a retrofit or big appliance replacement (hvac, kitchen appliances) you get to keep them for as long as you want.
Yeah, it sucks that I had to replace my furnace months after buying my home, but I got to pick the replacement. Yes, I chose to replace single-pane glass windows from the early 1900s in my home with newer double-pane and pay for it. But it was my choice and totally under my control to make the house the way I wanted it.
Commence flames about how not everyone can afford to do this, but my point is that SFH living can be superior since it's all in your control.
Living in a city in Europe in a very decent apartment in a building that was erected in the 1880s (sic), this article made me chuckle - but also feel bad about how the throwaway society of the 21st century has extended even to things that are supposed to last.
I live in a house that is at least 110 years old, built around the time Australia became a federation. The house has been repainted and extended several times, but it still has 3.5-meter-high ceilings, ventilation holes with intricate metal bars, and a lot of original details.
Even though the house is really old, it has been taken care of. There is no mold, the doors are still the same original ones, the fireplaces with decorative tiles are still there, and the wooden fireplace parts are still in good condition. I don't know how they did it, but it was built rather well.
Interesting tidbit: on the ceiling there was something like a Star of David. After asking LLMs what it was, one of them said that when Australia became a country, the Federation Star had only six points, denoting the newly incorporated states, but later a seventh point was added. Gemini told me that the frieze details were typical for the 1901-1910 period, and this helped me date the house.
This took about 10 minutes. Before, it would probably have taken me at least several hours of Googling.
I did, and also it matches what I know from history on how the flag of AU has changed so it matched several facts I knew already. Also mentioned 2 of the producers of freezes and etc in the city back during that time and I've found a some images from their catalog online.
Apart from a brief spell when I was very young and my family lived in a 1950s council house I've never lived in a building as new as that... and I'm 60 and have lived in 11 different properties. But that's the UK and Edinburgh for you...
Edit: Never had any mould problems but then again most of the places I lived had draughty sash windows...
Same, the building my apartment is in was built in the 16th century. It holds up great, and I certainly am not a paragon of maintenance.
The only issues are zoning laws which apparently prevent us from fixing "mundane" things - such as the windows making you feel like the people in the square below are actually in your living room. I wish that wasn't the case.
I don’t think you go lucky — renting from small landlords who live in/near building is the way to avoid this. In my experience, say the word “leak” they’ll be there in 10 minutes. And good tenants have value to them.
At two years with a corporate landlord, they’ve done the math and see they can cheaply renovate your apartment, jack up the rent, and make more money than they can by renewing you.
Small landlords also haven’t built software to collude with each other to raise prices.
Yeah, similar. The place I was in in the Netherlands was a converted office building (originally made iirc in the 1960s or 70s) but refurbished to apartments post the turn of the century.
In the many years I lived there... the place was pretty much identical. Sure, it'd probably need a deep clean for the (faux?) wooden floor that gets dirt into the crevices... but that's it?
Even back home in India, we've lived in buildings made around the 1990s iirc. They're perfectly fine, and apart from outdated floor plans, there's nothing problematic about their age at all.
Though, I just remembered one thing. In India, everything is made of concrete, and even in NL, beyond the outer concrete walls, the inner walls - even though often drywall-like - are very "high quality". They're extremely soundproof and fireproof (the latter of which I unfortunately learnt post a fellow neighbour's fire. Their room was burnt down to the bedframe, the neighbours were just fine. Never leave your cooking unattended, folks!)
We rented a couple of apartments for years, our longest tenant lived with us for 12 years.
It should be mentioned that this was a rental out in rural nowhere, so no dramatic price hikes. The house was also paid off years before it became a rental.
Our family did janitorial services, which usually came to fixing some smaller things once or twice a year. Nothing extreme.
For us, it was smooth sailing. I really think the key was rent stability.
From previous personal experience as a renter in a high cost of living area, though, it seemed like landlords were extremely focused on raising rent. If they felt that they couldn't raise rent enough (where I live there are regulations), they'd try every trick in the book to cancel your tenancy contract/agreement, because then they could set a new rent for the next one.
Some such units were more or less revolving doors with new tenants every 1-2-3 years.
Only as a student did I see slummy apartments rented out by actual slumlords. Those were professional landlords that owned tens to hundreds of rentals, aimed at students, and seemed to follow a strict maximize rent/minimize upkeep philosophy.
The best thing I've found after dealing with mold is a simple 3% hydrogen peroxide solution that is sold in any drugstore. Put it in a spray bottle and soak the area deeply enough and it should kill it down to the roots.
And a plus is that when it breaks down the only fumes it gives off is pure oxygen, unlike other cleaners like bleach. It did such a good job that I use peroxide as a general purpose cleaner now.
I will add one note that you should rinse your hands regularly if cleaning with peroxide. Just a few days ago I had a leaky spray nozzle, and the peroxide was on my finger long enough that it was able to soak in. It turned my skin chalk-white and caused an uncomfortable bubbling sensation inside my skin. I had no idea it was even a reaction that could happen. It only lasted for a few hours, but it's not something I would want to happen again.
You should note that while a single use (like to kill mould) may be fine, regular use on stone, metal or wood (i.e. most stuff in a bathroom) is not recommended because it is a powerful oxidizer that will considerably damage these surfaces if used regularly. That's because it releases hydroxyl radicals that destroy not only molecular bonds in stains and microorganism cell walls, but also attacks treated surfaces and corrodes metals.
I recommend dehumidification over chemicals. It's much simpler and way more thorough. It also suppresses pests like silverfish. Allergies probably much better too.
If you can keep your home under 45% RH, mold simply cannot grow. You'll never have to think about it. The longer and more persistent the dehumidification, the better the outcome. It can take weeks for the moisture to get pulled completely out of your drywall, interior framing, insulation, etc.
I recommend getting one of those units that has the integral pump. Run it 24/7. But don't use the pump for the first day. Dump that water out manually so you get a visceral understanding of how bad it was. That water was in all your stuff. In your walls, in your sheets, furniture and clean clothes.
I don't understand how they don't end up just drying the fresh air?
The average home has a certain amount of fresh air coming in. Outside is often 50-80% here in the UK. Am I just spending 150 watts to constantly dehumidify fresh air?
Is it really dehumidifying the walls, furniture etc or just the new fresh air?
> Am I just spending 150 watts to constantly dehumidify fresh air?
Yes. And it's probably closer to 800-1000 watts if you have a reasonably large living space. Someone living in the UK is likely to find this extremely offensive, but it's quite common in Texas and Florida.
I had a feeling. The dehumidifier manufacturers (and their paid partner bloggers etc) insisting it takes weeks and weeks to start taking effect always struck me as odd - probably because even at full whack you're probably drying out the furniture etc at a very very very slow rate, because you're mostly in a losing battle drying out the fresh air.
I wouldn't be surprised if energy companies were behind their popularity.
In the US a lot of new buildings are build with ERVs or HRVs that allow deliberate outside air exchange through the central ducting without losing heat/cooling or without gaining/losing humidity
Note that in (low enough concentrations) hydrogen peroxide is also used as a wound disinfectant so its not as horrible to get on yourself as some other cleaning substances.
I know it's just a blog post, but I wish I knew what "level" of mold and roaches we are talking about.
Seeing mold in joints is not unusual depending on the conditions, but it's also easily fixable.
For cockroaches either there is none in your area, either get one in a year "by mistake", but if it's a recurring events the problem is likely food or garbage that sits longer than it should.
I feel sorry for the author if they ever manage to buy a house or apartment. The two year rule of their experience (not mine) will suddenly accelerate!
At the end of the post they hint the actual issue here is “wanderlust”. This person seems to enjoy moving - unlikely they’ll ever prefer to own instead.
"My friend and I have a theory that when you rent an apartment, it starts going downhill after two years."
I have lived in many apartments that were decades old and well taken care of. None of the problems mentioned in the blog occurred. I don't see how even an slight exaggeration of this theory could remotely be true. Although I am sure specific cases can be found where it is true, but not universally.
Is his experience really that peculiar? He obviously picks an apartment that meets his comfort level, but apartments go through cycles of deterioration and repair, and staying at a static level of quality is economically very difficult at most market segments, given the industry’s engineering choices. So he selects an acceptable starting point and then watches it deteriorate below that. Eventually the apartment drops too low for its market segment and undergoes partial remanufacture; the cycle then repeats until something not easily repairable wears out, at which point it shifts market segment entirely. This loop usually continues until the whole building is remanufactured, unless it’s of historical significance.
Or they sue the landlord because of pulmonary problems "caused by the mould" that she let grow on the wall next to her bed for 6 months while smoking a pack a day. Costing me thousands in lawyer fees. Never renting out again, complete headfuck.
It's a maintenance issue you are not putting as much as is required, I have noticed the same effect my self, my cycle is around 4 years.
The thing is when you move into a place, the apartment has gone through thorough maintenance and cleaning, and of-course you don't pick the apartment with the obvious water stains and mold, or the sketchy neighbors and rundown hallway. But as the time passes, fixtures fail, damage accumulates neighbors rotate.
You apartment is the best when you move in because it's made to look its best and you pick the best looking one.
When you own a place you can do the extensive maintenance yourself.
It’s not perception as your friend alleges nor is it a conspiracy but rather all dwellings, apartments included, require continuous maintenance. Different levels of effort at different intervals. Skip it, and problems start to compound.
By the default nature of the bathroom being a humid environment (relative to the rest of any house), my wife and I squeegee our shower after each use, and attack the tile weekly in order to keep it free of mildew.
It’s easier for both the current tenants and landlords to defer maintenance by respectively, moving to a new building that matches your expectations and renting your unit to someone whose expectations matches the current state of the unit.
Both approaches don’t require addressing the previous maintenance “debt”. That’s why it feels like it’s all downhill after the first 2 years — either inside your unit, or in the building’s common spaces, or both.
I used to rent religiously for only 1 year terms, but my current appartment is different, the landlord and maintenance company are always on top of any potential issues before time and they allow me to go ahead and get stuff done if needed faster, like some air conditioning maintenance and then the landlord reimburse me, I've been 4+ years now and haven't looked back, so while I think the majority of people who rent are big companies who pinch pennies or landlords who just see it as a passive income and nothing else.
With agentic vibe-codig, we can accelerate that process 100x and turn any codebase into unmaintainable slop within merely a week! See Bun, for example.
Similar experience. What as a "decent/nice" building is now of middling to ill repute. Hallway carpets soaked in dog excrement and garbage water. More vagrants outside. (Not inside yet as in the article), amenities broken, gym equip is what it started with minus the gradual stream of equip that's broken since then; aging appliances, elevators always broken etc.
Shelter is as constant a cost one way or another as keeping yourself in food, water and oxygen.
I paid rent for most of my life, and suffered the leaks and the mold and broken heat pipes and once a collapsed ceiling. I've lived in at least 15 apartments in my life. Now that I own a house, I can confidently say that paying rent was by far the easier way of obtaining shelter.
I didn't really have a clue until I bought a 100 year old house that not a day would go by for 7 years without needing to fix something, or delay fixing something, or juggling numerous somethings that could implode my savings account unless I strategically patched and staggered them. There are elements out there. The first year in my home, a windstorm ripped half the siding off the front of the house and brought a tree down on the powerline. I had thought I could delay getting a new roof for a few years, but after two years another storm tore a hole in it and the price had nearly doubled. There was the year of ants... ants everywhere, hordes of them, unstoppable. Then the furnace caught fire after a minor repair. The chimney was on the verge of collapse. The sewer line was clogged and leaking. An infestation of an invasive form of earthworm killed the tree in front, and the city fined me for taking it down. In 2020, the street turned into a giant homeless encampment with people having rock fights and shooting bottle rockets over my roof. One month I suddenly got a $2000 water bill. Three days ago the fridge started leaking. Two days ago, the handle broke off the toilet while I was flushing it. I fixed em both.
When I look at what most people in the world do with most of their lives, it's this: Cook food, make shelter, and sleep. One way or another you're paying for it.
> Right now, with my current apartment, the treadmills in the gym are always broken, more and more roaches keep appearing in the kitchen, the elevators have started breaking down
This is common building maintenance. What does it have to do with whether the author has just moved in or approaching the 2-year mark?
This doesn't hold up for me in Japan. My apartment is in a building that's 10 years old now, and I've been here since it was new. Japan famously builds for a 20-ish-year depreciation schedule, although buildings like mine often stay in operation for 40 or more years. The build quality is honestly through the roof. Even the materials that are "builder quality" like unit kitchen and bath or veneer floors are still built to last, with minimal maintenance, and maximum convenience. As for the neighbors, they're mostly passing strangers. A few of them are busy bodies who love to force management to post "reminder" letters on the bulletin board. In other words, typical ultra-passive-aggressive-obsessive types. But most people that I encounter are delightful, and everyone just stays out of each other's way. Building maintenance is an old lady who tried to retire, and the building residents literally demanded that she un-retire and come back. This building is absolutely spotless and everything is ship-shape at all times. Most people own their units. I rent from the owner. In the time since I've lived here, I've bought multiple other properties, but I remain here because it's so damn easy and great.
Same in Germany, I have been here for 11 years and no issue. Only maybe the balcony that could use new floorboards but I don't care too much.
But why is she talking about broken treadmills? If I want to go to the gym I go to an actual gym... everything else is just an excuse to jack up the rent?
so as everything in life. your relationships, your car, your job. Everything requires maintenance, and from the brand-new version, it is ONLY and ALWAYS downhill unless YOU keep things up.
Maintenance is minimal on a 100 year old house or any well-built new dwelling. What the author seems to be describing is what I've seen referred to a "instant old" - construction where maintenance won't help much.
I rented two apartments and it was quite stable each time. Normal breakdowns happened, but they were repaired on the owner's cost. They now serve people who live there now.
This may be slightly off topic :). But I think I see this happen in other places beyond just housing, and maybe the timeline varies, but at the end of the day, company X puts a bunch of money into building an attractive place to attract consumers Y, however on top of that, they are also looking to make money, so once the initial investment goes in, the hope is that you don't have to invest (as much) to maintain, but ultimately entropy sneaks in, and the things that once made something amazing break down, and if a owner didn't pull in as much as they hoped going into it, (plus let's be honest if the first two years, let's say, you didn't have to do any repairs, it's definitely a struggle to be like....yes let's fix that expensive thing immediately, inaction is much easier, and it is hard to see the effect immediately.).At some point the attractiveness has worn off so much, they have to rename/remodel to get new consumers in the door. Now of course this article doesn't mention going back to prior places to live. I wonder if they have ever returned to a place that....didn't remodel, but that they felt still was nice upon return for 2 years, I think that might indicate other issues.
In my mind I'm thinking about gyms,now they will look shiny and new for a few years and then just get rundown, even though they pulled in regular recurring payments from members.
There's a lot of maintenance that is much easier/cheaper to do when the apartment is unoccupied, so the default is "do nothing, then when the tenant moves out in a year or two, do a couple years of maintenance much more affordably."
With your gym, for example, when it's new, you can do all the work you want. Once people are using it every day (especially if it's a 24/7 facility!) how exactly do you get in to do major work without making a bunch of people annoyed that half the gym is out of service for three weeks? You don't, until it gets to the point that people would prefer the downtime ... and this takes a surprising amount of grime.
Feel like that varies according to your room mates, and social dynamics (if you notably have a dwarf that spawn camps their bedroom, never do house chores etc...
Funny, I’ve had sort of the opposite experience: the first two years are full of problems, so many that I start really regretting living there. Mold, noisy neighbors, construction work. But then after year 3 nothing goes wrong anymore.
> I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in. Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen. Once the lease is up for renewal, I'm dying to leave. I then move into a sparkly, new apartment where I repeat the process all over again.
Except for the leak all of these issues are mainly caused by the tenant. Mold growing in the bathroom is because they're not airing it properly and don't clean it. Roaches and other insect infestations mostly appear because of mishandled food waste and not cleaning the kitchen and floor sufficiently.
"If when I go to the lavatory I don't pee, if you'll excuse the expression, into the bowl but on to the floor instead and if Zina and Darya Petrovna were to do the same thing, the lavatory would be ruined. Ruin, therefore, is not caused by lavatories but it's something that starts in people's heads. So when these clowns start shouting "Stop the ruin!" - I laugh!'"
this is bizarre. I lived in my last apartment for almost 9 years and it was great for the first 7.5 of those.
Things did start going downhill when it went from being owned by a local, private family business to a publicly traded American corporation, but I don't blame that on time. And my apartment _itself_ was fine, it was the common areas that were degrading.
The first few months, you're so impressed how smart everyone is, how competent, what a great organisation it is. By 18 months in, you've decided everyone is an idiot, the organisation is utterly hopeless, and at 2 years you quit.
Never experienced anything like this with apartments though - lived in my last one for 9 years and loved it.
I feel like there's a skill in preserving a living space. You have to meet the space half-way. If you live in India, you probably have a bathroom covered in waterproof tiles of concrete, with a floor that slopes towards a drain, and you can (and should) go wild and spray water everywhere. In the US, where everything is cheapo drywall with a thin layer of cheap paint (except the floor, which just exists to hold water until it can soak into the wall), you have to be extremely careful of water accumulating in one place regularly.
The vent stops working in the bathroom, as the author states? Get maintenance to fix it ASAP.
Roaches in the kitchen? Exterminator.
Leak in the living room? Maintenance. More than once? Get a lawyer ready.
Let's imagine that every rental property goes through a cycle when the owner sees that they are unable to find tenants willing to pay enough money, so they decide to invest money into improving the property, then for some time they think "meh, it's good enough" so it slowly degrades.
When you are looking for a new apartment you are always trying to find the best place that fits your budget, so you will always find it near the peak of the cycle and see it going downhill in front of your eyes.
IMO people in this thread have missed the point. I, too have moved about every two years as an adult (even though I've never had mold problems). Or when I haven't moved, I've made a job change.
Perhaps there is something in my nature that gets complacent after a couple of years and looks to make a change. It seems like that's what the author was trying to grasp towards.
I expect this tendency might go away as I get older, have a family, etc.
1. Like everything, apts degrade over time, maintenance usually happens in spikes, so the state of the place goes down until someone pays for the new paint job
2. It depends on the market, in highly attractive places, owners don't care about keeping tenants, so they'll let the place fall apart, until they can't get anyone anymore. Then they'll put in the price to put the place back in order and start again.
The problem is that maintenance is very expensive. The renter obviously doesn’t want to pay for it. It’s not their property. And the owner doesn’t want to cut into his profit margin for his new venture.
Add to that the cheap build quality of these new condo high-rises and you have the 2-year building.
I've lived in the same apartment for more than 15 years and I haven't experienced this. Some things have become somewhat more run-down but overall it's fairly stable.
I haven't lived in an apartment in nearly 30 years, but the last one I moved into, in 1996, was brand new and relatively fancy. I'd been renting a house with friends, but it was Houston and I wanted access to a pool and onsite fitness center, so I signed up at a new complex in a convenient area.
I split a two bedroom two bath place with a friend, and we moved in.
The place was made of tissuepaper. The brand new carpet was threadbare within 6 or 8 months. The walls were insanely thin (I still feel bad for traumatic breakup my neighbor apparently suffered, but it was rough to be woken up by sobs for weeks on end).
I moved out when the lease was up and rented a house again. And then, a shockingly low number of years later, the whole building was razed. I'd be surprised if it was more than 6 or 7 years old.
The complex is still there, but they build a high-rise on that part of the property.
It was the NEWEST building I'd ever lived in, and it ended up also being the very first building I lived in to be demolished. My ex-roomie and I are still pals, and when still laugh about how insanely shabby that place was.
All of this is a long way of saying: Yeah, I get it.
Wow, what a nasty thread. Having been involved with property maintenance since the 1980s, first on the US East coast then on the west coast I've seen many examples of this. Back in the real estate melt down of 1981+ triggered by the failure of savings and loans long time developers got pushed out. What replaced them were by and large inexpert egotists who were able to work financial markets for capital. Some decent construction still happened, but it became rare and I'll advised cost cutting started with site planning and foundation work. Then came the five over ones which are not inherently bad but provide many opportunities for cost cutting. In many recent builds in the US materials, construction, design, air circulation are all terrible. Add conflicts with sanitation providers and generally poor management and you get apartments that look okay after thorough preparation but then fall apart. Problems with appliances add into this.
It is sometimes possible to learn about these problems by carefully reviewing reviews and remarks from current and past tenants.
So much of this article is things that are entirely the author's fault. I say this as someone who has rented in everything from new buildings where I was the first tenant, to decades old buildings, to section 8 housing, to owning homes. You need to do maintenance on any place you live. I've noticed a lot of people that are my age and younger think that maintenance is the responsibility of the landlord, because they associate maintenance to building maintenance, and assume there are not responsible to do anything. I can't tell you the number of people whom I've visited in my life in their rental units to realize that they've never scrubbed their toilets, cleaned under the kickplate in their kitchen, or made any attempt at basic care or repair towards the property at all. I've visited several people, especially other nerdy guys, who don't even own a vacuum cleaner. There seems to be an assumption that everything is entirely the landlord's responsibility and if it goes awry they'll simply move and let the landlord deal with it.
I don't know how entire generations have managed to get to adulthood and through some aspects of life without learning basic life skills, but an apartment is not the same thing as a long-stay hotel. There's no maid service, your mommy is not there to make you chicken nuggets and clean up after you. You need to take care of your own shit, and I mean that both figuratively and literally. Clean up after yourself, manage moisture, take care not to damage things (in general, but especially where you live), and if you do damage something you should fix/repair it yourself as immediately as possible. Don't fuck a place up and then leave it for someone else to resolve, and definitely don't fuck it up and then act like its someone else's responsibility.
Unfortunately, because this seems to be a growing problem of complete lack of care, accountability, and basic life skills in society, you are more likely to also be negatively impacted by others. The reason the gym equipment eventually breaks is because nobody takes any care in using it or misuses it, and you end up in a tragedy of the commons situation. Even if you do everything right, you will eventually be negatively impacted by those who go through life fucking things up and blaming everyone else. It's one of the reasons why it's awesome to own your own home, everything is your problem, but you also have complete control over your own living environment.
> Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen.
When I started reading the article, I thought the whole point was gonna be that the author doesn't take care of the apartment.
The recurring leak might not be the author's fault, but the mold in the bathroom and roaches in the kitchen definitely are. Is this a case of a total lack of self-reflection? Or a post to scare people away from becoming landlords?
Fwiw, most mould is caused by buildings. Poor ventilation, leaks, no waterproofing, substandard building materials.
Yes, you can avoid mould in older buildings by carefully airing out rooms and keeping things dry and away from walls. But not if the previous three tenants had a mould issue and the landlord just painted over it.
> most mould is caused by buildings.
An honourable mention to fitting Cavity Wall Insulation, heavily sold and encouraged by UK government energy saving schemes thorough the 1990's and 2000's.
Except by stuffing the wall cavity, you provide a nice moisture bridge to outside whilst simultaneously stopping air circulating in the cavity and whipping away moisture; thus an explosion of mould.
The policy was a disaster, as getting the stuff removed costs a small fortune.
I think this depends on the construction of the rest of the house. A typical stack built house in the US will have extensive insulation in the exterior walls, but it's paired with a number of different layers intended to expel moisture.
As a retrofit without those things I guess I can see it being problematic.
Maybe everyone here can help me. I bought a house with an accessory addon already built, but it's walls and roof are very cheap aluminum. It's a constant source of mold. I'm at the point where I want to demolish it and rebuild properly. Some contractors I've spoken with instead encourage me to just frame out inside the existing aluminum box and get double pane windows instead. I don't think that will solve the problem though, these cheap aluminum panels are so full of mold now how would putting fresh wood over the panels solve anything, in 4 years I'll just have more mold growing over the interior frame out if I don't demolish and rebuild the whole thing with proper moisture barriers on the exterior and underside of the accessory room.
The walls are aluminum? Where do you live?
Trailer park in California. It's a prefab kit built accessory room. The main part of the trailer is normal, just this accessory room is built out of aluminum panels (about 3' x 9' per panel) and then plenty of single pane windows.
Mold growth is a moisture problem which can either be because of condensation or because of leaks. I agree with the contractors, properly framing out and insulating the interior would probably help a lot with condensation on the inside of the aluminum, as would double pane windows. Ventilation is also important for stopping mold growth.
Who has cavity wall insulation removed? The effect on your heating bill is going to be much worse than a small amount of mould, and I'm unconvinced that it makes it worse anyway - one of the main causes of mould in my experience is poor insulation! It makes the walls cold, which means you get condensation on them, and if you have poor ventilation in the rooms then you get mould.
If you have this problem, then the only thing I found which helps is fungicidal wash, and keeping furniture away from the problem walls (especially north facing corners of the house). I suspect wallpaper would also help but I never tried it.
Who has cavity wall insulation removed? The effect on your heating bill is going to be much worse than a small amount of mould
Some of these houses have been transformed into being unfit for human habitation due to the damp and mould. In some cases, the botched insulation has resulted in an increase in heating costs (along with the damp and mold). Some have suffered structural damage due to the botched insulation, costing tens of thousands to repair.
It's definitely true that not all apartments are equally prone to mold, but individual behavior also has a huge effect on mold. If you know that you're living in a place that's susceptible to mold, you have to take that into account when deciding how to furnish your place and how to manage humidity.
Even if you're renting, it's worth keeping an eye on the humidity and setting up dehumidifiers if it's consistently getting high.
Yes, but no. We have historic, sometimes even mediaeval buildings. They weren't built with the current energy efficiency in mind. Leaving the bathroom door open after showering. Not putting furniture flus against the wall are simple measures you could take that don't need structural adaptations. I know there are plentiful of technical options but some common sense goes a long way.
It infuriates me to no end that we are expected to put up with building design and technology from 1900 as a consequence of the obsession with "property values must go up" (notwithstanding the property) and a healthy helping of "regulations are only ever added to, everything old is forever grandfathered".
Like, central ventilation is not magical unobtainable technology. Simple heat recovery even vastly improves heating costs in a way insulation never can.
What’s the alternative? Governments pass regulations and all buildings must be adapted within 12 months? 36 months?
What of the buildings that don’t comply in time? Or can’t find trades to do it in time? Or we notice to our eternal shock that projects to ensure code tracking are priced at a serious premium?
Or, how many improvements to code would we decide weren’t desirable because of the costs of retrofitting, so now we lose even the low slope of improvement versus today.
This is a fairly well-trod path in economic policy circles, especially in Europe. You can either grandfather in buildings, perhaps with rules that line up with maintenance schedules anyway so that when something breaks anyway you replace it with the new standard (the HVAC world understands this well with refrigerants), or you sign yourself up for stunning, astronomical expense.
Not to mention, a lot of places around the world care about the look and character of historical locations. If a structure wasn't designed for central HVAC, for example, then there's often nowhere to hide the condenser units, air handle units or the ductwork. Same with insulation -- if that exterior wall wasn't intended to have it you've got a couple options and they both hurt.
Last of all, I'll mention labor. The type of skilled labor that can do any specific trade at all is relatively rare in the aftermath of the "college-or-bust" era, but the kind of labor you'd want for renovation work (fast, efficient, can tackle multiple different aspects at once without calling in different trades, and gets it right the first time to minimize disruption/call backs) is even more rare. To carry out some kind of massive renovation project at a national level even with infinite money you're talking about a generational timeframe just due to labor constraints.
Government removes regulations and let property owners make whichever decisions they feel is best for them individually.
consider Japan's housing market for ideas
A large-scale overhaul of the entire country's housing stock is not realistic for multiple reasons, including shortages of qualified people.
There is a lot of old buildings out there.
Yeah. The last two apartments I've been in have had leaks. I begged the landlord to open up the walls and dry them out. They just painted over it, so I moved out. Sadly, that means two other people now in apartments can never figure out why their place smells musty and they feel a bit congested all the time.
[dead]
Yeah I thought this was gonna be about landlords hiking the price beyond market value after 2 years. But honestly both those issues are just the apartment is deep cleaned before you move in and this person doesn't know how to or just doesn't clean their bathroom properly, not cleaning bathroom fan filter and leaves food waste out in the kitchen.
Probably would have a better experience if they hired a cleaner.
> The recurring leak might not be the author's fault, but the... roaches in the kitchen definitely are
"Definitely"? A unit can look clean after treatment while still being mid-cycle. Rent it during that window and the roaches come back through no fault of the tenant.
It wouldn't even be that crazy to postulate the life-cycle of a roach could track the 2-Year Apartment Rule (minus any residual effects of the extermination).
I don’t know how you get a moral judgement out of this article. That's misdirected blame. It pressures tenants into staying quiet or spraying their own units for a building-level problem.
edit:
From this article on the American Cockroach https://www.canr.msu.edu/resources/american-cockroach
> Development to adult averages about 15 months, varying between 9-1/2 to 20 months.
> Buildings with multiple dwellings usually require the treatment of each unit.
This pretty much contradicts blaming the tenant and the roach development aligns with the 2-Year Apartment Rule. It says apartments usually require each unit to be treated. That means no single tenant can do that. That makes it a building-level infestation by definition.
> "Definitely"? A unit can look clean after treatment while still being mid-cycle. Rent it during that window and the roaches come back through no fault of the tenant.
"A unit" can, sure. But, "every apartment I've ever lived in"... come on! From TFA:
> I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in. Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen.
If this doesn't set off all the alarm bells, I don't know what does.
> roaches in the kitchen
roaches need to come from somewhere. Even if your apartment is spotless, someone else in the building might not be...
If you see more and more of them in your kitchen, you most likely are not cleaning it properly after every meal.
Sure, if your kitchen was on the moon, you wouldn't have a bug issue. That would still be dirty.
More than what? If my neighbour has 2000 roaches in his apartment. Then it would not be strange 10 walks into mine. And if they do they of course gonna hang out were they find the most amount of food (even if you clean odds are there is going to be more residue etc in kitchen vs bedroom)
I had neighbors with filthy apartments who thought the solution is routine spraying. Every time, the roaches would take shelter in mine through unknown passages.
In the post, every time they move, they happen to have neighbors that brings roaches and they must move out again after 2 years...
Can confirm. Used to live in an apartment where I did everything I could to keep the place clean. Cockroaches kept coming back.
The solution? Moving to a different place. Never seen a roach ever again. Even moving to a different apartment inside the building didn't help.
Hint: it's the neighbors.
But is it the landlord's issue?
Most leases have clauses stating something to the effect that tenants are responsible for keeping their units reasonably clean and sanitary. If tenants start complaining about roaches, a good landlord will do a bit of investigation and remind tenants of the importance of cleanliness, proper disposal of trash, etc.
At least in Oakland, it's the landlord's responsibility to manage pest control. It needs to be done at a building level, or else the roaches will just get shuffled around.
Yeah a good landlord will do pest control but cockroaches are...cockroaches. If you do pest control but have tenants who are leaving food waste out, not disposing of trash properly, etc. it will be a game of whack-a-mole.
As far as communities are concerned, the best places to live are the places where landlords/management and residents/tenants both do their parts to keep things clean and habitable. Teamwork makes the dream work.
a "good" landlord will lecture the tenant without solving the problem and a "bad" landlord will double the rent
> ...a "good" landlord will lecture the tenant without solving the problem
Huh? When it comes to pests, it takes effort on both sides, especially in environments that are prone to pests. A landlord can pay for regular pest control services but if there are tenants who don't store and dispose of waste properly, it can reduce their efficacy.
Good luck with that. I have seen landlords that flat out deny there is a roach issue.
Yeah, I think that is the case: the 2 years may be a reflection on the level of care they give.
We built a house and after 2 years it started to need more maintenance, it is normal. I fixed it and every now and then I need to do more. Just regular adult life.
Agreed, when I was reading this I thought "but this is normal adult life?"
Renters are not generally able or willing to do basic home maintenance, so
It could be the author's fault, but IMO more likely the apartment's, the landlord's, and/or the neighborhood's fault.
With mold, I guess the people living there have some influence, they might never open the window, they might shower 50 minutes, etc... but there are some places where no matter how careful you are, mold will show up. And even if a perfect tenant with the perfect process for preventing mold might be able to keep it away, you can't be expected to meet those standards. Some buildings are just more prone to mold than others.
Same with cockroaches... Sure maybe OP never cleans up in the kitchen and leaves chinese take out in the sink for a month. It can also be that their neighbor is extremely messy, or one window is next to the trash, or that the pipes have something nasty in them that never got cleaned out, so no matter how clean your room is, the roaches still get in somehow.
> roaches in the kitchen definitely are
I used to live in a nice apartment in downtown Baltimore. It was a first-story rowhouse in Charles Village (a nice area, back in the 1980s).
It had roaches. Every building, for miles around, had them.
I used to put out lines of borax, and the little bastards took out straws, and snorted them.
I guess maybe new buildings, get a grace period, but roaches are impressive little beasties.
Roaches in a clean, maintained apartment means there is a problem elsewhere in the building. We had a small infestation. And no matter how many times we called the exterminator they kept coming back. Found out one of our neighbors was a hoarder. He passed away, they deep cleaned the apartment, and the roach problem stopped right away. Roaches still need to feed and breed. Once you take that away no more roaches.
I guess it depends on where you live.
Baltimore is a tough town. The roaches have a reputation to maintain.
Do you actually believe roaches in Baltimore have evolved in a different way or is it the locale?
The point is in a high density urban environment it's the neighborhood not just your specific building and in some places it's not realistic to imagine the entire neighborhood to be thoroughly clean.
New York City is certainly a good case in point with the city's massive amount of garbage placed on the sidewalk once a week
It’s a joke.
Nevermind.
My first thought. I also encountered this problem and learned to clean the kitchen every night, never leave anything edible on countertop and floot, and store everything in good food containers.
Same here. Especially that 2 year window... That was about when mold took over my bathroom. Then I wiped it all with Chlorine based cleaner, installed a duct with fan which works for up to 2 hours after detecting motion, made a grill in the door and there has been little to no mold since (in year 4 now).
But there may also be an element of insufficient building codes? Mold comes with poor (and inhomogeneous) heating, insufficient ventilation, bad moisture shielding (hot moist air should never enter and cool down in a building's structure), cold-bridges (not sure what the English term is for parts of a house significantly colder that other so moisture settles there). Ventilation holes should be well defined, and not via cracks that also let creatures in... Etc.
So it may not be all OP's fault. But it sure sounds like it.
I've unfortunately lived in too many houses where mold becomes a problem. It's never my fault, it's always been because the house is old/doesn't have proper damp proofing/cheap paint was used, or no damp proofing applied on exterior walls. I clean it, of course, so I'm not literally living in a house with moldy walls, and I keep the house as dry and ventilated as possible. But in certain climates it's nearly inevitable to get mold during winter or the humid season unless the house is very well built and modern.
The worst, and again very common, is when the paint is so cheap it can't be cleaned easily - when you use anything that can actually clean the mold (soapy water + a bit of vinegar is my preference, but baking soda, very weak bleach solution, or commercial mold cleaners) it also destroys the paint.
Do you have HVAC? Maybe some of my difficultly understanding is being American I'm in a hotter, much more humid climate, so we've got central HVAC. A key feature of heat pumps isn't just that it lowers the temperature of the air, it also reduces humidity.
I've got a lot of exposure to new home construction here and can tell you I don't even know what "damp proofing" is, and our bathrooms don't need special paint. They're ventilated and we have HVAC. Beyond that, if homeowners take 30 minute showers with scalding hot water and the door closed then, well, the outcome is inevitable no matter what you do. Not just mold but you'll start damaging fixtures, etc.
It's hard to get old caulking clean and keep it mold free, just gotta recaulk regularly, but I'm somewhat skeptical of blaming paint.
> Maybe some of my difficultly understanding is being American
In the UK, in winter, ambient exterior air is both fairly cold (let's say 40F) and extremely humid, often around 80% relative humidity.
Houses are both poorly insulated and poorly ventilated. Heating is (relatively) very expensive.
Most housing units don't have clothes dryers, and it's common to dry clothing indoors on wire racks.
The net result is that you end up with extremely humid indoor air in the 55F-65F range, while the exterior walls and windows of the building never really heat up properly.
It's a recipe for condensation on the interior surfaces of those walls and windows.
You can fix this either by heating the building enough that the exterior walls actually heat up beyond the dew point (which few people can afford to do), or by keeping windows open in winter to provide some ventilation (which makes the already-poorly-heated building even less comfortable).
No, I've never seen a residential house with HVAC, even in big apartments. It's all split wall mounted AC units here, or if you're fancy a ceiling version that's basically the same. I think Americans call these heat pumps?
Split AC systems remove moisture from the air when they’re running too, that’s why there’s a condensate drain on the evaporator (and the condenser, but that is outside).
They remove a small amount of moisture, yes. It's nothing compared to what a dehumidifier removes though, even if they're in dry mode.
There is specific kitchen / bathroom paint that is smoother and has some anti-mold ingredients. Makes a huge difference to use the correct paint in a damp environment.
Condensation itself is a function of the air conditions (temperature and relative humidity ie dew point) and surface temperatures. All surfaces should be comfortably above the dew point to prevent mold. You can use a hygrometer to measure the air, and an infrared thermometer to measure surface temperatures.
Absolutely but one thing about living in rented accommodation - you rarely get to choose the paint.
I agree that a dehumidifier helps but you basically need one in every room. Where I live you can easily take out 10 liters a day from every room during the humid season (which is the maximum capacity of the machine I rented).
Might be different but repainting your apartment is expected from renters here to the point that contracts often state you need to do it every X years and before moving out.
Definitely not normal here although in my current house I did repaint with good paint, but I had to ask the owner permission first.
I think that the owner needing to repaint between tenants is considered normal wear and tear here.
i've always assumed that the letting's agency will _definitely_ take my deposit if i fsck with the walls
> All surfaces should be comfortably above the dew point to prevent mold.
I agree that this should be the case, but actually achieving this in the UK (where heating is very expensive and housing is poorly insulated) is prohibitively expensive for many people.
Dehumidifier is an option as well, and/or heat-recovery ventilation.
>But in certain climates it's nearly inevitable to get mold during winter or the humid season unless the house is very well built and modern.
Do you keep it warm? These things were often built with a fireplace inside.
Get a dehumidifier and put it in the room with the mold problem.
There's a relatively easy technological solution to mold: buy a dehumidifier.
We bought two after moving to Ireland. Both have drainage hoses. One has a pump and empties into the kitchen sink, the other has no pump and the drainage hose empties into the shower. No more mold problems.
Thank you for sharing. Do your dehumidifiers run all the time? Do they have some kind of auto on / auto off feature? Do you run them on some schedule? As necessary? I am thinking it would be very easy for me to forget unless it is a set it and forget it kind of thing.
I used to be in a house that needed a dehumidifier. I bought one with a built-in pump to empty the water tank, which can be tapped into an AC drain line, sink drain, or directly outdoors, depending on your situation. You can set many of them to run constantly or when humidity is above a certain level.
If you live in a hot/humid location your HVAC is much better at dehumidification than a dehumidifier, since a dehumidifier outputs a ton of heat to operate. But in a cool/humid location, you can definitely rig up one to be decently set and forget. You still need to perform maintenance (cleaning the grill, adding a bit of white vinegar to the water tank to kill growth buildup, etc).
I actually put mine into the HVAC cabinet and used a smart plug and smart thermostat to turn on the dehumidifier and the HVAC fan to dehumidify the house. But that’s way more than you need to do for a small apartment.
Another "recently Irish" here -
Ours has been on constantly for nearly a year. Any decent one has humidity set points - we set ours for 55%. It's a bang-bang controller with a 5% range - it'll run until humidity drops to 52%, then turn off until it rises to 57%. During the winter our single one struggles to get much below 60%, we might add a second next year.
An unexpected benefit (for us, as its not something we're used to) is its virtually "free", as we don't have to run the electric clothes dryer anymore (nearly €4/load). We just hang the clothes on a rack by the dehumidifier and it dries them out in a few hours. My wife is starting to prefer it as its not destroying clothes nearly as quickly.
> An unexpected benefit (for us, as its not something we're used to) is its virtually "free", as we don't have to run the electric clothes dryer anymore (nearly €4/load). We just hang the clothes on a rack by the dehumidifier and it dries them out fairly quickly.
It’s not free as the dehumidifier has to do more work. If you have a modern heat-pump clothes dryer you might be using more electricity by abusing your humidifier like this.
"Free" as in our electric bill was basically unchanged before and after it; and we still get 10-15% lower humidity on average which has taken care of our (minor) mold problems.
I have two humidifiers running constantly in my unfinished basement; they drain into the sewer line.
Roaches are notoriously hard to get rid for a reason. If you don't call an exterminator with the proper poison almost any effort you make will be moot.
I can tell you from firsthand experience that roaches will move with you. My partner's old apartment had roaches and even though we took great care to clean and separate everything, keep all of her kitchen stuff in tubs and slowly sort through it they still managed to come to the new apartment.
The author lacks self-reflection if they truely thing each brand new place suddenly gets roaches.
> If you don't call an exterminator with the proper poison almost any effort you make will be moot.
Nah, not true. I lived in a student housing that was positively _infested_ with cockroaches (and had stuff like wood paneling on the walls, just to get an idea - i.e. lots of places for roaches to hide). We managed to largely get rid of cockroaches in our room (you still get the occasional one, because well, you had to open the door, and hallways were infested as I mentioned).
It's not _that_ hard, there are a lot of solutions. You need to do 3 things:
a. seal all holes/cracks/niches (e.g. with silicone). cover ventilation holes with nets. Install sponge/rubber bands to make sure doors/windows close well.
b. kill them once when you move in (after doing the work at point a) using copious amounts of insecticides; then install roach traps (sticky ones are good) to catch the occasional one that makes it through your defenses. Keep occasional spraying in the corners/ behind the fridge/ near the pipes/ in places where they are likely to gather.
c. Keep it clean/ don't offer a lot of incentives for roaches to come over to you (no breadcrumbs all over the place, food in closed containers etc)
Do these well and you should be largely roach-free, regardless of the building. But yeah, it's an annoying fight if the building itself is infested.
I lived in an old but thoroughly maintained building, every 6 months and at the beginning of summer, there was a thorough extermination routine applied through out the whole building, you could see a ring of dead roaches around the building the next day, 2 to 4 weeks later you would start spotting them in the apartment again. They leave and die and new ones move in. In old buildings they are just a fact of life, keep your home clean and crumb free and they will prefer your neighbors.
My building is 15 stories, built in 1916. I’m on the 2nd floor. Every apartment can sign up for the monthly exterminator when he comes to do common areas. Are there roaches? You bet. Not a ton but you’ll see one or two a few times a month.
I have a business where it's important we don't have roaches.
So we spray more often.
It costs me $83 per three months. I haven't seen a roach in sixteen years.
My parents used to be landlords. For years they always bought used appliances for the apartments to save money until a used stove came with a surprise roach infestation. New appliances only after that.
You need to tell the landlord.
I think a lot of people are worried about informing the landlord (especially after two years) as market rates will have risen, and getting stuff fixed might prompt a rise on their own apartment.
This has been my experience as well. Many owners want to know about issues before they fester.
I'm fortunate to have an attentive property manager and a landlord who is interested in doing the preventative maintenance to keep the units from degrading.
I inherited a mold and moisture problem under the kitchen sink when I moved in, one that I neglected for a while. As soon as I told my landlord they sent a crew out to tear down the wall, fix the plumbing, and rebuild it in a more robust manner.
I don't even have a particularly nice apartment. My apartment just turned 100 years old, but it's maintained well enough. I've been here seven years now. I keep my house clean, don't leave food out, and still see the occasional cockroach in the kitchen. Probably once every 1-2 months. Fine.
Lots of landlords don't care. They don't live in those apartments themselves. The best bet is to move. Don't ask how I know.
The article seems mostly about noticing a fun coincidence backed by anecdotal evidence, except I’m currently going through the same thing, so I’m lending the theory more weight. (The elevators were always fine; now, two years later, they’re constantly out, and the garage door is busted for the first time.)
My thought was that it could plausibly be that renting goes in cycles: the building is desperate for renters, so they fix everything, advertise, and so on. Then, once they’re full, the company cuts costs by reducing maintenance. Then they lose renters, and the cycle continues.
However, I then thought about my last two buildings, which were cheaper, and things were just broken right from the start, so… who knows.
I can see the greater complex-wide cycle argument for complex wide amenities, leasing office support, and maintenance request response/resolution times.
Everyone moves out, so the above issues become a higher priority until units are backfilled. Since units are filled, the above issues become less important (to the owners at least, not the renters). Then renters receive this worse service, start moving out in waves, and the cycle continues.
The mold, and in-unit plumbing, and insect issues seem more like routine maintenance types of things to me. But compounded slightly by longer maintenance request response/resolution times.
Of course you should take care of your home, but to be fair, the moisture that caused the mold could have come from a leak elsewhere. The roaches could have found a way into your home from that crackhead neighbor's place through cracks and seams somewhere in the construction.
Author seems to imply that the issues are the landlord's fault though, since their theory is that it's on purpose to be able to raise rent on the next guy.
They also imply that is always happen.
Sure, you can have a mold issue in the bathroom because of poor ventilation. Happened to me in a flat. But if it happens every time, the renter can probably be the culprit.Same for the cockroaches. You can be victim of a neighbor’s lack of care. But if it happens in every flat, maybe you're the problem.
I'm all-in for blaming landlord's of taking money from renters and not putting any money back on helping keeping the flat in a livable state. But some of the issue the author is pointing out, and the fact that they happen in every flat, make me think that maybe part of the blame is on them.
I had the same thought after reading the first few sentences. Bathrooms and kitchens especially have to be cleaned regularly, and not just superficially. Otherwise, what the author describes happens.
> but the mold in the bathroom and roaches in the kitchen definitely are.
I would not agree.
Having lived in low budget apartments for quite a while as a student, a lot of these things are "a norm" and not really the renters fault, but the owners.
Examples:
I moved into an apartment that was "subterranean" level, meaning not fully basement but also not ground floor. When we were looking at it, it seemed fine, everything great, but bathroom had the tiniest vent window ever. I asked about the mold, and the owner was like "oh no, no need to worry about that, the ventilation is quite good actually even tho the window is tiny, we made sure of that" - and at the moment, it seemed so, the air was dry and there was no "humid" feeling about the room.
Well, well - the bathroom was humid as hell and would stay that way after the first shower, even with all the vents open and ventilation turned on. Even worse, the humidity in the rooms was so high that the paint on the wall stayed fresh for quite a long time, painting a few of my shirts that touched the wall. When summer came, the rooms became a hotspot for mosquitoes, and the owner would be like "ah just close the windows" - but that kept the humidity and heat in, making life unbearable and causing mold to erupt (also, because a lot of it was just painted over!! just painted over mold, like what the fuck?)
Another one had homeless people which started living around the building, leaving food and booze all over the place. To make it worse, large trash bins were outside our building, which lead to roaches coming in from the bins and from the balconies, under which the aforementioned people "lived". We couldn't do nothing about it, except ensure that there is minimal reason for them to come to us, lay traps around and ensure we have anti-bug powders around the perimeter. I talked to some of the neighbors that lived there for years and they said it happens nearly every summer.
The bed in the apartment started falling apart at some point, and going to fix it I noticed the bed _was fixed_ already, even tho it was said to be new - and it was fixed badly. The same owner charged me 2k for a "designer couch" that "we ruined", even tho before us moving in the couch was welded and nailed together, as it was obviously broken before, and the owner did not want to admit it even when shown the photo evidence.
Once I moved out, I saw what happened to the apartment on the next listing - the owner just painted over the kitchen cabinets, painted the bed, put a new mattress on it and said "all furniture is new".
So a lot of things might sound like they're the authors fault, but having met one too many "bad actors" in the renting game, I'm quite sure that some of these things might be the owners responsibility.
> I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in. Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen. Once the lease is up for renewal, I'm dying to leave. I then move into a sparkly, new apartment where I repeat the process all over again.
Sounds like it takes her about 2 years to trash any apartment she moves into.
Yeah not sure how mold infestation in every bathroom of every apartment you've lived at for longer than 2 years can be anything besides a user error.
This sounds a lot like... when you move into a property, and you don't maintain it like your own, less than 2 years, things start to break.
My wife or I clean all bathrooms with strong cleaner, every week. I suppose, the author did not. And it isn't landlord's job to clean rooms.
I think apartments needs maintenance and it's hard to communicate to the landlord there is a problem or fix or find someone to fix it. The mold is very common. The mold is very easy to remove when it's small but it becomes exponentially bigger growing. Go on Amazon search for anti-mold cleaning product and a spatula. When you see a mold 1cm large get on a chair spray and scrape. It will take 5 minute. If you wait 3 months thinking you should tell the landlord and then the landlord will call someone then the mold will have become 100 square cm, it will be a 100 minutes to clean.
The roaches too if they are in your kitchen call a exterminator. Don't leave food out at night, clean all crumbs.
If you don't take care of those things even in a a new building they will appear on their own after 2 years.
I'm going to get flamed for this, but I think this is one less-focused-on benefit of buying a single family home. You're responsible for the maintenance but if you want to or have to do a retrofit or big appliance replacement (hvac, kitchen appliances) you get to keep them for as long as you want.
Yeah, it sucks that I had to replace my furnace months after buying my home, but I got to pick the replacement. Yes, I chose to replace single-pane glass windows from the early 1900s in my home with newer double-pane and pay for it. But it was my choice and totally under my control to make the house the way I wanted it.
Commence flames about how not everyone can afford to do this, but my point is that SFH living can be superior since it's all in your control.
1 hour later and no flames
Living in a city in Europe in a very decent apartment in a building that was erected in the 1880s (sic), this article made me chuckle - but also feel bad about how the throwaway society of the 21st century has extended even to things that are supposed to last.
I live in a house that is at least 110 years old, built around the time Australia became a federation. The house has been repainted and extended several times, but it still has 3.5-meter-high ceilings, ventilation holes with intricate metal bars, and a lot of original details.
Even though the house is really old, it has been taken care of. There is no mold, the doors are still the same original ones, the fireplaces with decorative tiles are still there, and the wooden fireplace parts are still in good condition. I don't know how they did it, but it was built rather well.
Interesting tidbit: on the ceiling there was something like a Star of David. After asking LLMs what it was, one of them said that when Australia became a country, the Federation Star had only six points, denoting the newly incorporated states, but later a seventh point was added. Gemini told me that the frieze details were typical for the 1901-1910 period, and this helped me date the house.
This took about 10 minutes. Before, it would probably have taken me at least several hours of Googling.
Did you then Google to corroborate that history LLMs told you with actual references? They could well be confidently wrong as they always are.
I did, and also it matches what I know from history on how the flag of AU has changed so it matched several facts I knew already. Also mentioned 2 of the producers of freezes and etc in the city back during that time and I've found a some images from their catalog online.
"Even though the house is really old"
Apart from a brief spell when I was very young and my family lived in a 1950s council house I've never lived in a building as new as that... and I'm 60 and have lived in 11 different properties. But that's the UK and Edinburgh for you...
Edit: Never had any mould problems but then again most of the places I lived had draughty sash windows...
Same, the building my apartment is in was built in the 16th century. It holds up great, and I certainly am not a paragon of maintenance.
The only issues are zoning laws which apparently prevent us from fixing "mundane" things - such as the windows making you feel like the people in the square below are actually in your living room. I wish that wasn't the case.
I lived in an apt in Brooklyn for 5 years, a brownstone built in 1931, and I never saw a single roach (they also never raised the rent).
1. we kept it very clean 2. the owners/landlords lived in the building with their children
Thank you "Monika landlord"! (that's how she signed the Christmas cards she would give us - yes, I know how lucky we got)
I don’t think you go lucky — renting from small landlords who live in/near building is the way to avoid this. In my experience, say the word “leak” they’ll be there in 10 minutes. And good tenants have value to them.
At two years with a corporate landlord, they’ve done the math and see they can cheaply renovate your apartment, jack up the rent, and make more money than they can by renewing you.
Small landlords also haven’t built software to collude with each other to raise prices.
Yeah, similar. The place I was in in the Netherlands was a converted office building (originally made iirc in the 1960s or 70s) but refurbished to apartments post the turn of the century.
In the many years I lived there... the place was pretty much identical. Sure, it'd probably need a deep clean for the (faux?) wooden floor that gets dirt into the crevices... but that's it?
Even back home in India, we've lived in buildings made around the 1990s iirc. They're perfectly fine, and apart from outdated floor plans, there's nothing problematic about their age at all.
Though, I just remembered one thing. In India, everything is made of concrete, and even in NL, beyond the outer concrete walls, the inner walls - even though often drywall-like - are very "high quality". They're extremely soundproof and fireproof (the latter of which I unfortunately learnt post a fellow neighbour's fire. Their room was burnt down to the bedframe, the neighbours were just fine. Never leave your cooking unattended, folks!)
Can't say I share your experience. I lived in a house built sometime in the 18th century and mold, leaks, and ants were all issues.
We rented a couple of apartments for years, our longest tenant lived with us for 12 years.
It should be mentioned that this was a rental out in rural nowhere, so no dramatic price hikes. The house was also paid off years before it became a rental.
Our family did janitorial services, which usually came to fixing some smaller things once or twice a year. Nothing extreme.
For us, it was smooth sailing. I really think the key was rent stability.
From previous personal experience as a renter in a high cost of living area, though, it seemed like landlords were extremely focused on raising rent. If they felt that they couldn't raise rent enough (where I live there are regulations), they'd try every trick in the book to cancel your tenancy contract/agreement, because then they could set a new rent for the next one.
Some such units were more or less revolving doors with new tenants every 1-2-3 years.
Only as a student did I see slummy apartments rented out by actual slumlords. Those were professional landlords that owned tens to hundreds of rentals, aimed at students, and seemed to follow a strict maximize rent/minimize upkeep philosophy.
The best thing I've found after dealing with mold is a simple 3% hydrogen peroxide solution that is sold in any drugstore. Put it in a spray bottle and soak the area deeply enough and it should kill it down to the roots.
And a plus is that when it breaks down the only fumes it gives off is pure oxygen, unlike other cleaners like bleach. It did such a good job that I use peroxide as a general purpose cleaner now.
I will add one note that you should rinse your hands regularly if cleaning with peroxide. Just a few days ago I had a leaky spray nozzle, and the peroxide was on my finger long enough that it was able to soak in. It turned my skin chalk-white and caused an uncomfortable bubbling sensation inside my skin. I had no idea it was even a reaction that could happen. It only lasted for a few hours, but it's not something I would want to happen again.
You should note that while a single use (like to kill mould) may be fine, regular use on stone, metal or wood (i.e. most stuff in a bathroom) is not recommended because it is a powerful oxidizer that will considerably damage these surfaces if used regularly. That's because it releases hydroxyl radicals that destroy not only molecular bonds in stains and microorganism cell walls, but also attacks treated surfaces and corrodes metals.
Duly noted.
I recommend dehumidification over chemicals. It's much simpler and way more thorough. It also suppresses pests like silverfish. Allergies probably much better too.
If you can keep your home under 45% RH, mold simply cannot grow. You'll never have to think about it. The longer and more persistent the dehumidification, the better the outcome. It can take weeks for the moisture to get pulled completely out of your drywall, interior framing, insulation, etc.
I recommend getting one of those units that has the integral pump. Run it 24/7. But don't use the pump for the first day. Dump that water out manually so you get a visceral understanding of how bad it was. That water was in all your stuff. In your walls, in your sheets, furniture and clean clothes.
I don't understand how they don't end up just drying the fresh air?
The average home has a certain amount of fresh air coming in. Outside is often 50-80% here in the UK. Am I just spending 150 watts to constantly dehumidify fresh air?
Is it really dehumidifying the walls, furniture etc or just the new fresh air?
> Am I just spending 150 watts to constantly dehumidify fresh air?
Yes. And it's probably closer to 800-1000 watts if you have a reasonably large living space. Someone living in the UK is likely to find this extremely offensive, but it's quite common in Texas and Florida.
I had a feeling. The dehumidifier manufacturers (and their paid partner bloggers etc) insisting it takes weeks and weeks to start taking effect always struck me as odd - probably because even at full whack you're probably drying out the furniture etc at a very very very slow rate, because you're mostly in a losing battle drying out the fresh air.
I wouldn't be surprised if energy companies were behind their popularity.
If it didn't work I wouldn't be paying to run it.
In the US a lot of new buildings are build with ERVs or HRVs that allow deliberate outside air exchange through the central ducting without losing heat/cooling or without gaining/losing humidity
Note that in (low enough concentrations) hydrogen peroxide is also used as a wound disinfectant so its not as horrible to get on yourself as some other cleaning substances.
Good pointer. Bleach isn't more effective than regular soap or hydrogen peroxyde.
I know it's just a blog post, but I wish I knew what "level" of mold and roaches we are talking about.
Seeing mold in joints is not unusual depending on the conditions, but it's also easily fixable.
For cockroaches either there is none in your area, either get one in a year "by mistake", but if it's a recurring events the problem is likely food or garbage that sits longer than it should.
I feel sorry for the author if they ever manage to buy a house or apartment. The two year rule of their experience (not mine) will suddenly accelerate!
At the end of the post they hint the actual issue here is “wanderlust”. This person seems to enjoy moving - unlikely they’ll ever prefer to own instead.
"My friend and I have a theory that when you rent an apartment, it starts going downhill after two years."
I have lived in many apartments that were decades old and well taken care of. None of the problems mentioned in the blog occurred. I don't see how even an slight exaggeration of this theory could remotely be true. Although I am sure specific cases can be found where it is true, but not universally.
Having been a landlord, roommate, and renter, I can tell you the tenant is the problem here. Red flags in every paragraph.
That mold in the bathroom is most likely your fault, though.
Is his experience really that peculiar? He obviously picks an apartment that meets his comfort level, but apartments go through cycles of deterioration and repair, and staying at a static level of quality is economically very difficult at most market segments, given the industry’s engineering choices. So he selects an acceptable starting point and then watches it deteriorate below that. Eventually the apartment drops too low for its market segment and undergoes partial remanufacture; the cycle then repeats until something not easily repairable wears out, at which point it shifts market segment entirely. This loop usually continues until the whole building is remanufactured, unless it’s of historical significance.
Has the author tried cleaning his bathroom?
Apt username for this question.
No they leave it to the landlord when they move out and wonder why they didn't get their deposit back.
Or they sue the landlord because of pulmonary problems "caused by the mould" that she let grow on the wall next to her bed for 6 months while smoking a pack a day. Costing me thousands in lawyer fees. Never renting out again, complete headfuck.
It's a maintenance issue you are not putting as much as is required, I have noticed the same effect my self, my cycle is around 4 years.
The thing is when you move into a place, the apartment has gone through thorough maintenance and cleaning, and of-course you don't pick the apartment with the obvious water stains and mold, or the sketchy neighbors and rundown hallway. But as the time passes, fixtures fail, damage accumulates neighbors rotate.
You apartment is the best when you move in because it's made to look its best and you pick the best looking one.
When you own a place you can do the extensive maintenance yourself.
It’s not perception as your friend alleges nor is it a conspiracy but rather all dwellings, apartments included, require continuous maintenance. Different levels of effort at different intervals. Skip it, and problems start to compound.
By the default nature of the bathroom being a humid environment (relative to the rest of any house), my wife and I squeegee our shower after each use, and attack the tile weekly in order to keep it free of mildew.
It’s easier for both the current tenants and landlords to defer maintenance by respectively, moving to a new building that matches your expectations and renting your unit to someone whose expectations matches the current state of the unit.
Both approaches don’t require addressing the previous maintenance “debt”. That’s why it feels like it’s all downhill after the first 2 years — either inside your unit, or in the building’s common spaces, or both.
I used to rent religiously for only 1 year terms, but my current appartment is different, the landlord and maintenance company are always on top of any potential issues before time and they allow me to go ahead and get stuff done if needed faster, like some air conditioning maintenance and then the landlord reimburse me, I've been 4+ years now and haven't looked back, so while I think the majority of people who rent are big companies who pinch pennies or landlords who just see it as a passive income and nothing else.
Replace 'apartment' for 'codebase' and this still stands.
With agentic vibe-codig, we can accelerate that process 100x and turn any codebase into unmaintainable slop within merely a week! See Bun, for example.
Similar experience. What as a "decent/nice" building is now of middling to ill repute. Hallway carpets soaked in dog excrement and garbage water. More vagrants outside. (Not inside yet as in the article), amenities broken, gym equip is what it started with minus the gradual stream of equip that's broken since then; aging appliances, elevators always broken etc.
Shelter is as constant a cost one way or another as keeping yourself in food, water and oxygen.
I paid rent for most of my life, and suffered the leaks and the mold and broken heat pipes and once a collapsed ceiling. I've lived in at least 15 apartments in my life. Now that I own a house, I can confidently say that paying rent was by far the easier way of obtaining shelter.
I didn't really have a clue until I bought a 100 year old house that not a day would go by for 7 years without needing to fix something, or delay fixing something, or juggling numerous somethings that could implode my savings account unless I strategically patched and staggered them. There are elements out there. The first year in my home, a windstorm ripped half the siding off the front of the house and brought a tree down on the powerline. I had thought I could delay getting a new roof for a few years, but after two years another storm tore a hole in it and the price had nearly doubled. There was the year of ants... ants everywhere, hordes of them, unstoppable. Then the furnace caught fire after a minor repair. The chimney was on the verge of collapse. The sewer line was clogged and leaking. An infestation of an invasive form of earthworm killed the tree in front, and the city fined me for taking it down. In 2020, the street turned into a giant homeless encampment with people having rock fights and shooting bottle rockets over my roof. One month I suddenly got a $2000 water bill. Three days ago the fridge started leaking. Two days ago, the handle broke off the toilet while I was flushing it. I fixed em both.
When I look at what most people in the world do with most of their lives, it's this: Cook food, make shelter, and sleep. One way or another you're paying for it.
> Right now, with my current apartment, the treadmills in the gym are always broken, more and more roaches keep appearing in the kitchen, the elevators have started breaking down
This is common building maintenance. What does it have to do with whether the author has just moved in or approaching the 2-year mark?
This doesn't hold up for me in Japan. My apartment is in a building that's 10 years old now, and I've been here since it was new. Japan famously builds for a 20-ish-year depreciation schedule, although buildings like mine often stay in operation for 40 or more years. The build quality is honestly through the roof. Even the materials that are "builder quality" like unit kitchen and bath or veneer floors are still built to last, with minimal maintenance, and maximum convenience. As for the neighbors, they're mostly passing strangers. A few of them are busy bodies who love to force management to post "reminder" letters on the bulletin board. In other words, typical ultra-passive-aggressive-obsessive types. But most people that I encounter are delightful, and everyone just stays out of each other's way. Building maintenance is an old lady who tried to retire, and the building residents literally demanded that she un-retire and come back. This building is absolutely spotless and everything is ship-shape at all times. Most people own their units. I rent from the owner. In the time since I've lived here, I've bought multiple other properties, but I remain here because it's so damn easy and great.
Same in Germany, I have been here for 11 years and no issue. Only maybe the balcony that could use new floorboards but I don't care too much. But why is she talking about broken treadmills? If I want to go to the gym I go to an actual gym... everything else is just an excuse to jack up the rent?
> The hell? Call me a wuss, but I don't want to worry about who I'm riding the elevator with, not when I'm paying as much rent as I am.
Frankly, I wouldn't want to ride the elevator with the author either.
What I found amusingly about that paragraph is that the author laments encountering "the crackhead" while paying exorbitant rent.
That implies the crackhead can also afford said rent. In which case, they have just as much right to be in the elevator as the author. Fuck off!
so as everything in life. your relationships, your car, your job. Everything requires maintenance, and from the brand-new version, it is ONLY and ALWAYS downhill unless YOU keep things up.
Maintenance is minimal on a 100 year old house or any well-built new dwelling. What the author seems to be describing is what I've seen referred to a "instant old" - construction where maintenance won't help much.
I rented two apartments and it was quite stable each time. Normal breakdowns happened, but they were repaired on the owner's cost. They now serve people who live there now.
This may be slightly off topic :). But I think I see this happen in other places beyond just housing, and maybe the timeline varies, but at the end of the day, company X puts a bunch of money into building an attractive place to attract consumers Y, however on top of that, they are also looking to make money, so once the initial investment goes in, the hope is that you don't have to invest (as much) to maintain, but ultimately entropy sneaks in, and the things that once made something amazing break down, and if a owner didn't pull in as much as they hoped going into it, (plus let's be honest if the first two years, let's say, you didn't have to do any repairs, it's definitely a struggle to be like....yes let's fix that expensive thing immediately, inaction is much easier, and it is hard to see the effect immediately.).At some point the attractiveness has worn off so much, they have to rename/remodel to get new consumers in the door. Now of course this article doesn't mention going back to prior places to live. I wonder if they have ever returned to a place that....didn't remodel, but that they felt still was nice upon return for 2 years, I think that might indicate other issues.
In my mind I'm thinking about gyms,now they will look shiny and new for a few years and then just get rundown, even though they pulled in regular recurring payments from members.
There's a lot of maintenance that is much easier/cheaper to do when the apartment is unoccupied, so the default is "do nothing, then when the tenant moves out in a year or two, do a couple years of maintenance much more affordably."
With your gym, for example, when it's new, you can do all the work you want. Once people are using it every day (especially if it's a 24/7 facility!) how exactly do you get in to do major work without making a bunch of people annoyed that half the gym is out of service for three weeks? You don't, until it gets to the point that people would prefer the downtime ... and this takes a surprising amount of grime.
Can't say I agree. When I used to rent I lived in the same apartment for 3 years, and not a single thing changed about it.
Damn I was hoping for some sort of explanation. This rule doesn't apply to me, my apartments are pretty good even after two years.
I do end up changing apartments after the two year lease period because I get bored of the area or the landlord raises the rent.
Feel like that varies according to your room mates, and social dynamics (if you notably have a dwarf that spawn camps their bedroom, never do house chores etc...
went through your posts. you seem grumpy. try going outside of the city for at least a month. it should give you perspective
Sounds like what the author wants is a hotel room.
Funny, I’ve had sort of the opposite experience: the first two years are full of problems, so many that I start really regretting living there. Mold, noisy neighbors, construction work. But then after year 3 nothing goes wrong anymore.
Holy self report here. How can somebody write this and then post it without realizing that they are the problems?
"Why are roaches in your kitchen?"... "Because the landlord didnt bring the trash out"
> I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in. Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen. Once the lease is up for renewal, I'm dying to leave. I then move into a sparkly, new apartment where I repeat the process all over again.
Except for the leak all of these issues are mainly caused by the tenant. Mold growing in the bathroom is because they're not airing it properly and don't clean it. Roaches and other insect infestations mostly appear because of mishandled food waste and not cleaning the kitchen and floor sufficiently.
"If when I go to the lavatory I don't pee, if you'll excuse the expression, into the bowl but on to the floor instead and if Zina and Darya Petrovna were to do the same thing, the lavatory would be ruined. Ruin, therefore, is not caused by lavatories but it's something that starts in people's heads. So when these clowns start shouting "Stop the ruin!" - I laugh!'"
"The Heart of a Dog". M.Bulgakov.
this is bizarre. I lived in my last apartment for almost 9 years and it was great for the first 7.5 of those.
Things did start going downhill when it went from being owned by a local, private family business to a publicly traded American corporation, but I don't blame that on time. And my apartment _itself_ was fine, it was the common areas that were degrading.
A fascinating insight into the architecture of modern cpus from an entrepreneurial angle. Bravo!
I had a very similar experience with jobs.
The first few months, you're so impressed how smart everyone is, how competent, what a great organisation it is. By 18 months in, you've decided everyone is an idiot, the organisation is utterly hopeless, and at 2 years you quit.
Never experienced anything like this with apartments though - lived in my last one for 9 years and loved it.
If it's true, then I think you are cursed and I hope you never move into a complex I'm living in ;)
Do you clean your apartment?
I´d be curious to know in what kind of city the author live.
I feel like there's a skill in preserving a living space. You have to meet the space half-way. If you live in India, you probably have a bathroom covered in waterproof tiles of concrete, with a floor that slopes towards a drain, and you can (and should) go wild and spray water everywhere. In the US, where everything is cheapo drywall with a thin layer of cheap paint (except the floor, which just exists to hold water until it can soak into the wall), you have to be extremely careful of water accumulating in one place regularly.
The vent stops working in the bathroom, as the author states? Get maintenance to fix it ASAP.
Roaches in the kitchen? Exterminator.
Leak in the living room? Maintenance. More than once? Get a lawyer ready.
Let's imagine that every rental property goes through a cycle when the owner sees that they are unable to find tenants willing to pay enough money, so they decide to invest money into improving the property, then for some time they think "meh, it's good enough" so it slowly degrades.
When you are looking for a new apartment you are always trying to find the best place that fits your budget, so you will always find it near the peak of the cycle and see it going downhill in front of your eyes.
Just a theory.
That apply for jobs too
IMO people in this thread have missed the point. I, too have moved about every two years as an adult (even though I've never had mold problems). Or when I haven't moved, I've made a job change.
Perhaps there is something in my nature that gets complacent after a couple of years and looks to make a change. It seems like that's what the author was trying to grasp towards.
I expect this tendency might go away as I get older, have a family, etc.
I wonder how old the author is and how many 2-year move cycles they've actually been through in their probably very short life...
Also wonder if some people just have a higher level of agency to communicate with landlord to ensure improvements happen
2 things:
1. Like everything, apts degrade over time, maintenance usually happens in spikes, so the state of the place goes down until someone pays for the new paint job
2. It depends on the market, in highly attractive places, owners don't care about keeping tenants, so they'll let the place fall apart, until they can't get anyone anymore. Then they'll put in the price to put the place back in order and start again.
I think the rule applies to far more than apartments.
The problem is that maintenance is very expensive. The renter obviously doesn’t want to pay for it. It’s not their property. And the owner doesn’t want to cut into his profit margin for his new venture.
Add to that the cheap build quality of these new condo high-rises and you have the 2-year building.
Maybe I'm missing the point here but I really think that the author is not talking about apartments at all like many comments suggest
I've lived in the same apartment for more than 15 years and I haven't experienced this. Some things have become somewhat more run-down but overall it's fairly stable.
I haven't lived in an apartment in nearly 30 years, but the last one I moved into, in 1996, was brand new and relatively fancy. I'd been renting a house with friends, but it was Houston and I wanted access to a pool and onsite fitness center, so I signed up at a new complex in a convenient area.
I split a two bedroom two bath place with a friend, and we moved in.
The place was made of tissuepaper. The brand new carpet was threadbare within 6 or 8 months. The walls were insanely thin (I still feel bad for traumatic breakup my neighbor apparently suffered, but it was rough to be woken up by sobs for weeks on end).
I moved out when the lease was up and rented a house again. And then, a shockingly low number of years later, the whole building was razed. I'd be surprised if it was more than 6 or 7 years old.
The complex is still there, but they build a high-rise on that part of the property.
It was the NEWEST building I'd ever lived in, and it ended up also being the very first building I lived in to be demolished. My ex-roomie and I are still pals, and when still laugh about how insanely shabby that place was.
All of this is a long way of saying: Yeah, I get it.
have fun constantly paying increasing market rates as you move into a new apartment.
Wow, what a nasty thread. Having been involved with property maintenance since the 1980s, first on the US East coast then on the west coast I've seen many examples of this. Back in the real estate melt down of 1981+ triggered by the failure of savings and loans long time developers got pushed out. What replaced them were by and large inexpert egotists who were able to work financial markets for capital. Some decent construction still happened, but it became rare and I'll advised cost cutting started with site planning and foundation work. Then came the five over ones which are not inherently bad but provide many opportunities for cost cutting. In many recent builds in the US materials, construction, design, air circulation are all terrible. Add conflicts with sanitation providers and generally poor management and you get apartments that look okay after thorough preparation but then fall apart. Problems with appliances add into this.
It is sometimes possible to learn about these problems by carefully reviewing reviews and remarks from current and past tenants.
So much of this article is things that are entirely the author's fault. I say this as someone who has rented in everything from new buildings where I was the first tenant, to decades old buildings, to section 8 housing, to owning homes. You need to do maintenance on any place you live. I've noticed a lot of people that are my age and younger think that maintenance is the responsibility of the landlord, because they associate maintenance to building maintenance, and assume there are not responsible to do anything. I can't tell you the number of people whom I've visited in my life in their rental units to realize that they've never scrubbed their toilets, cleaned under the kickplate in their kitchen, or made any attempt at basic care or repair towards the property at all. I've visited several people, especially other nerdy guys, who don't even own a vacuum cleaner. There seems to be an assumption that everything is entirely the landlord's responsibility and if it goes awry they'll simply move and let the landlord deal with it.
I don't know how entire generations have managed to get to adulthood and through some aspects of life without learning basic life skills, but an apartment is not the same thing as a long-stay hotel. There's no maid service, your mommy is not there to make you chicken nuggets and clean up after you. You need to take care of your own shit, and I mean that both figuratively and literally. Clean up after yourself, manage moisture, take care not to damage things (in general, but especially where you live), and if you do damage something you should fix/repair it yourself as immediately as possible. Don't fuck a place up and then leave it for someone else to resolve, and definitely don't fuck it up and then act like its someone else's responsibility.
Unfortunately, because this seems to be a growing problem of complete lack of care, accountability, and basic life skills in society, you are more likely to also be negatively impacted by others. The reason the gym equipment eventually breaks is because nobody takes any care in using it or misuses it, and you end up in a tragedy of the commons situation. Even if you do everything right, you will eventually be negatively impacted by those who go through life fucking things up and blaming everyone else. It's one of the reasons why it's awesome to own your own home, everything is your problem, but you also have complete control over your own living environment.
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